Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: James Gunn on Getting Fired and Rehired by Disney

"Disney totally had the right to fire me. This wasn’t a free speech issue."

James Gunn has finally opened up about Disney firing and then rehiring him to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Disney fired Gunn in July 2018 after old tweets of his prompted outrage in some circles online. In an interview with Deadline, Gunn took full responsibility for what led to his firing and said he bore no ill will toward Disney or Marvel, and said he had accepted that his time with the Guardians franchise was over when Disney co-chairman and CCO Alan Horn broached rehiring him. Gunn was officially rehired this past March.

"I was about to sit down and talk about The Suicide Squad with DC and I was excited about that. Alan asked me to come talk to him. I really believe he is a good man and I think he hired me back because he thought that was the right thing to do," Gunn said. "I’m always attracted to finding that goodness in places we don’t expect, often in the characters in my movies. I got a little bit teary-eyed in his office. And then I had to go tell [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige I had just decided to do The Suicide Squad, so that made me very nervous."

In the end, Gunn is doing both films, with The Suicide Squad going ahead first and then Gunn will segue to Guardians Vol. 3. For his part, Gunn has accepted that he was ultimately responsible for the circumstances that led to his initial firing:

"I don’t blame anyone. I feel and have felt bad for a while about some of the ways I spoke publicly; some of the jokes I made, some of the targets of my humor, just the unintentional consequences of not being more compassionate in what I’m putting out there. I know that people have been hurt by things that I’ve said, and that’s still my responsibility, that I wasn’t as compassionate as I should be in what I say. I feel bad for that and take full responsibility. Disney totally had the right to fire me. This wasn’t a free speech issue. I said something they didn’t like and they completely had the right to fire me. There was never any argument of that."

Gunn said he had a lot of anger at himself and did a lot of soul-searching in the wake of his firing, but that he ultimately he had to let go of that rage in order to heal and move on.

Gunn is excited to be able to finish the Guardians' -- and especially Rocket Raccoon's, a character he says he is especially attached to -- story arc that he began with the first film, an opportunity he had grimly accepted was lost even though Marvel had said they would still use his script for Vol.3. (Marvel and Disney, for their part, had not met with any other directors for the film.)

"Groot is like my dog. I love Groot in a completely different way. I relate to Rocket and I feel compassion for Rocket, but I also feel like his story has not been completed," Gunn said. "He has an arc that started in the first movie, continued into the second and goes through Infinity War and Endgame, and then I was set to really finish that arc in Guardians 3. That was a big loss to me—not being able to finish that story—though I was comforted by the fact that they were still planning to use my script."